


Six Times Kujen and Jedao Played a Game

by misura



Category: Machineries of Empire Series - Yoon Ha Lee
Genre: Games, M/M, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-08 08:53:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8838298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: [what it says on the tin]





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tonepoem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tonepoem/gifts).



.01 _the cabbage game_

"I thought Kel liked cabbages," Kujen said. Half the buttons on his shirt had been left undone.

Jedao wondered why Kujen felt he needed that sort of advantage in order to play a game that, by the sound of it, came down to something as simple as growing cabbages and trading them in for money at the bank. "To eat, yes. That doesn't mean all Kel dream of being farmers."

"Probably a good thing," Kujen said, continuing to set up the game. "You grew up on one, didn't you? A farm, I mean. With geese."

"Yes, I did, and before you ask, no, it has not left me with a burning desire to play the game of goose. It's a kids' game - I've played it plenty of times in my childhood."

"Well, I'm sure there's an adult version out there," Kujen said. "Perhaps one where you need to lead a string of goslings safely from start to finish."

"While other, heretical goslings are trying to kill you?"

Kujen shrugged. "Why not?"

Jedao sighed. "Let's just get this over with. As you pointed out, I did grow up on a farm, so be prepared to lose."

"Unlikely. Besides, I very much doubt the cabbages your parents used to grow were capable of exploding if someone handled them wrong."

 

.02 _the waiting game_

"I'll kill her for you," Kujen said, and Jedao bit back his first response, which was that Kujen would do nothing of the sort. If Kujen chose to kill one of his fellow heptarchs, it would be for Kujen.

"When?" he asked instead. Kujen would be in no danger, even if people found out.

"Soon." Kujen made the word sound like a promise. It was a little amusing to see him so serious, to have him put on this display of possessiveness.

Jedao was Kel enough to know how loyalty worked. It was rarely an even exchange.

"That's a bit vague," he said. "You can't be more precise?"

"I have put the necessary mechanisms in motion," Kujen said. "Wheels are turning. You do want her gone, don't you?"

_Yes. No._ A Shuos would feel no compunction about using a lover to assassinate someone, especially for the sake of a position. A Kel would have either found a way to kill himself or put the incident out of his mind. "You mean that you'll wait for someone else to kill her."

"Of course," Kujen said. "I'm busy, Jedao. I have experiments to oversee, paperwork to deal with. I can't simply come running whenever you get hurt."

_She never hurt me,_ Jedao wanted to say, but he knew it wasn't quite true. "Good to know where I rank in order of importance. Right behind your paperwork, huh?"

"You take up less time," Kujen explained.

"I suppose I should feel flattered that you tried to make me believe that you'd kill someone for me."

"Oh, that bit's actually true," Kujen said. "In fact, I'll merrily kill an entire empire if it will make you happy. All in good time, though."

 

.03 _the losing game_

"Let me get this clear." Jedao frowned. "The object of the game is to lose everything and be disgraced?"

He had wondered, on occasion, if Kujen knew about the game he had created at the academy.

Kujen shook his head. "Not at all. The object of the game is to do so before any of the other players manage it. In a certain light, you could consider the object of the game to be the elevation and promotion of your fellow players."

"How selfless," Jedao said dryly.

Kujen shrugged. "Sufficient acts of selflessness might well win you the game, yes."

There might be a lesson there, Jedao thought. Victory through defeat. Promotion through degradation. It was all rather twisted and thus typical of Kujen.

"If you can find a Kel to play it with you, I recommend you don't pass up the opportunity. They make the most adorable expressions as the game progresses."

Jedao wondered what Kel would play with a Nirai. Even if they didn't know who Kujen was, they should still know to be wary of a Nirai bearing games.

"Shall we give it a go?" Kujen asked, holding up one of the game pieces. The scrywolf. "I'll even let you go first."

"Thanks, but no thanks," Jedao said. He was tempted to select the ninefox, but settled for the ashhawk in the end, knowing that it would amuse Kujen if he did so.

 

.04 _the betting game_

"A kiss," Kujen said. "And I'll take a card."

"Aren't you a little old for this type of betting?" Jedao asked. He was looking at a mere Show of Strength, but if he got lucky, he might improve towards a Queen of Birds, Enthroned.

Kujen, being Kujen, was cheating. The only question was how obvious he'd be about it.

"You don't have enough money to make it interesting for me," Kujen said. "I could and would beggar you, and still not have gained even a sixtieth of the expenses for the experiment I wish to conduct."

"Fine. I'll raise you a kiss when you're not expecting one. From me," he added, to be both clear and safe.

Judging by Kujen's expression, he had failed in both goals. "I would think that betting other people's favors would rather go against the spirit of the game. On the other hand, you're mine, so for me to bet _your_ favors would be permissible."

"A little unsporting, don't you think?" As if that would mean anything to Kujen or, to be fair, to anyone who had ever played this game. Jedao had rarely played, preferring more orderly betting games, but he wasn't unfamiliar with the way it worked.

"The idea is to bet something one's opponent wishes to gain badly enough to take a risk," Kujen said. "You know that you shouldn't, and yet the lure of the prize makes you do it anyway."

"A kiss isn't much of a lure." Neither of them were inexperienced, or shy. Jedao could count the things that he might want to do with (or to) Kujen on one hand.

He'd assumed Kujen didn't have anything on his list left. Apparently, he'd been wrong and there was, in fact, something Kujen wanted from him and for whatever reason, didn't want to have to ask.

Kujen chuckled. "I do believe that you've just realized that it is."

 

.05 _the cradle game_

"None of them quite understand how it works, you see," Kujen said, moving one of his pattern-stones.

Jedao wondered if Kujen did, or if Kujen's knowledge was limited to its operation. Right now, he supposed it made little difference, but in the future, it might become important.

"If any of them figure it out, that might put you in a bit of a difficult position."

"All the more reason for me to ensure your loyalty." Kujen smiled.

"By being here, playing cards?" Jedao hadn't been sure what to expect. "It seems a bit tame."

"I'm not here in the sense that you would define 'here'," Kujen said. "Rather, I am here in the sense that your mind cannot quite grasp the realities of the cradle and so is protecting itself and you by projecting the sort of reality that you are capable of dealing with."

"You mean you're a fake?" Jedao frowned as he nudged one of his own pattern-stones a field up.

"I'm as real as you are," Kujen said. "At the moment, that's not very, but still within acceptable limits. I might need to correct that at some point. That won't be much fun for you, I fear, although we can always hope your mind will have developped some more coping mechanisms by then. Imagine something."

Jedao concluded that Kujen was mostly a fake, but it was a fake built from his own memories of the man, so it was probably as close as he was going to get, and better than nothing at all. "What?"

"Anything," Kujen said. "Anything you can imagine exists in here, and a number of things you can't."

"I don't understand."

"In here, you can be the general who conquers an empire for me. You can be the slave who rules the empire by whispering suggestions in my ear. You can even be a cabbage farmer, if you wish."

"At least one of us is obsessed with cabbages and it's not me," Jedao said.

Kujen shrugged. "Of course, you can also be the general who loses my empire, or the slave whom I order tortured at my whim."

"A certain pattern seems to be emerging from these fantasies."

"Be fair, Jedao," Kujen said. "I'm not a general. If you want to rule once all the wars are won, that's fine with me. I'll run your calculations. I'll create new and terrible weapons for your use. But don't expect me to deal with troops or people. That's not what I do. People bore me."

" 'Once all the wars are won' is never."

"Perhaps," Kujen acknowledged. "Unless you were planning on killing them all - which, again, fine with me, the Kel will need something to keep them happy. A war now and then should do the trick."

"You're saying this is some sort of test environment. A place to run simulations."

"Within certain limits, yes," Kujen said. "Severe limits, I should say. Compared to what I'm used to out there, this isn't much, but on the upside, it's cheap. I have some ideas on what it was intended for originally. I won't bore you with those. They're irrelevant now, anyway."

Jedao made a mental note to ask about them some other time, when he might have come up with some ideas of his own. "You've really run a scenario where you ruled an empire? How bad did things get, before the end?"

"I killed everyone." Kujen shrugged. "Not my fault, really. I ran experiments for a few decennia. Blew up some alien invaders who grossly underestimated my defenses. It got boring after a while."

"You killed me, too?" Jedao had dreamt about their first meeting sometimes. Killing Kujen again and again, until there were no more bodies left.

"This was before your time. It's remarkable, really, what effect you have on me. Nobody else has ever been quite so entertaining. Of course, I also haven't agreed to conspire against the heptarchate with anyone else. Still, that seems rather slim."

"And now you have me all to yourself," Jedao said.

Kujen spread his hands. "Would you have preferred me to wait until you were grey and old? This way, we'll have all the time we could need. Having you all to myself is just a nice bonus."

The only alternative to not believing Kujen was believing him. Jedao wasn't sure which he'd mind more being wrong about.

He also wasn't sure if it mattered. "I'm your gun. Forever."

 

.06 _the endgame_

A pity, Kujen thought, to have the longest game he'd ever played end like this.

_Still,_ he told himself, _better with a bang than with a whimper._

He'd have to make sure that it would be a suitably big one.

 

.06 _the endgame_

"You're my gun," Kujen said. He sounded very confident for a man who was about to die.

Cheris wondered what would happen if he tried to take over her body. If she fired, he would have no other choice: they were the only two people here.

"I know what I am," Jedao said. "The question is: what are you?"

"Let's start with: moderately pleased to discover you're not dead after all," Kujen said. The voidmoths in his shadow sat silent, unmoving. Cheris wish that they would show her where the trap was. "We can move on from there."

Kujen was Nirai. He'd have done the maths, calculated his chances. He'd have read everything there was to read on whom she had been.

"I should kill you," Jedao said. "I think it would take, this time."

"The odds are in your favor," Kujen acknowledged. Too easily, Cheris thought. "A bit lacking in originality, but then, there's something to be said for symmetry."

"You're right: I'm still your gun," Jedao said. "Four hundred odd years, and that's the one thing that's never changed. Still, there's a bit more to our relationship than that, isn't there?"

"An appeal to my heart?" Kujen chuckled. "You're becoming sentimental in your old age, Jedao."

"I'm your gun," Jedao repeated. "But, Kujen, you're my bullet. I think the time has finally come for me to use you as I always intended to use you."

The voidmoths in Kujen's shadow rustled their wings. "Very well. I'll play. What's my target? Who would you like me to kill for you? Or should that be: how many?"

"I'll tell you when it's enough," Jedao said. "How's that?"

Kujen shrugged. "Works for me."

**Author's Note:**

> I suspect the cabbage obsessed person may be me ^^;


End file.
